The station opened along with the rest of the first section of the present time line 1, on 10 June 1926. The ceremony was attended by Captain General Emilio Barrera, representing king Alfonso XIII, and Bishop Miralles of Barcelona who blessed the facilities. During the inaugural trip, the atendees sttoped at Espanya station where a military band played the national anthem and lunch was served.

Very close to the point where the ceremony marking the beginning of construction took place, the only entrance to Espanya station in 1926. This entrance was closed only three years later due to the building work in plaça d’Espanya and the 1929 International Exposition.

This entrance led to large concourse from one side of wich a hughe hall from wich a corridor led to the stairs to the platform for trains travelling towards Bordeta, and from wich two staircases descended to the platform for trains towards Catalunya station, from this platform, a further corridor allowed access to the recently opened underground station of the “Compañía General de Ferrocarriles Catalanes” (today the FGC).

The nave of Espanya station has a number of distinctive features. On the one hand the platforms and the tracks are on a curve, on the other it contained three tracks, two for the regular services of the line and a third wich was planned as the beginning of a branch line to reach the Can Tunis Hippodrome, but was never built. This third track was, however, used for fast services between Espanya and Catalunya Station during the 1929 International Exposition.

For all these reasons the vault of the station is a series of telescopic tunnels, the widest of them, at 27 metres wide, was, for many years, the widest tunnel span in the world.

As we have mentioned previously, in 1929 the only entrance to the station was closed and was replaced by four new entrances which could be reached by two new corridors from the main concourse.

Two of these new entrances were located at the beginning of Avinguda de la Reina Maria Cristina, an other on the corner of Carrer de la Creu Coberta, and the fourth on the corner of Carrer de Tarragona.

The station maintained this layout, with minor changes, until 1975, when the present line 3 reached Plaça d’Espanya. For this reason a new corridor was built to link the two stations, the third track was eliminated and, in its place, the platform for trains towards Catalunya was enlarged.